Sameness or fairness?/Stéphanie Aboul Hosn

Stéphanie Aboul Hosn

A holder of a BA in international affairs - Lebanon. My experience includes a variety of Human Right related tasks and initiatives. Interested in cultural travels, who loves the universality of psycological development and wants to be part of it.

1 -9 -2021

Warning: my article can be provocative to some of you, because I will be tackling some of our historically supported concepts of humanity; equality. So please, join me in this article’s journey as I elaborate my point of view: Equality is not justice.

It hurts me as a human and a citizen when society or political entities entitlement be based on unfair measurements. Yes, we are equal in God’s eyes, equal before the law, but not in the choices we make. Therefore, equality comes from God not from man. Are there any spices identical to another one? Absolutely not. Every single individual has their own value system, characteristics, ability, ambition, strength and weaknesses. As humans we tend to be distinguished by our uniqueness.

 Therefore, people cannot be considered equal. For example, if a woman who is motivated, works hard and is responsible in life towards her duties, she will eventually earn wealth based on her personal efforts and choices. 

She was then able to buy a house. On the other hand, another man who was irresponsible and dependent his whole life, failed in his career and was therefore unable to make any fortune or wealth and was unable to own a house. Should the first woman not earn her house in order to achieve equality with the second man? Would this be fair? I will leave that to you to decide. 

Equality without proportionality is not fair. In my view, when entitlements are given unconditionally to citizens or individuals without a merit, the result would be catastrophic with terrible outcomes. 

Among these outcomes include corruption, a power vacuum, injustice, and violations of human rights. Also, on a personal level, it can encourage individuals who are dependent and spoiled. 

Equality; when there are two parties or more getting equal rights without the “who really gets what they deserve” concept, do you believe that this is a fair treatment? I do not think so. Just take a classroom as another example, is it fair to treat the hard-working student the same as the lazy one? Give them the same grade anyway? that applies to many different aspects in life as well. 

In order to achieve success, people must be treated with justice rather than equality. We can be sensitive to some human rights vocabulary such as equality but we need to understand that in order to achieve justice, equality is required to go hand in hand with egalitarian values and fairness. 

Justice is responsibility and vice versa. Moreover, Justice is accountability, and without the quality of being fair, justice will not prevail. Furthermore, without 'proportionate equality’ we cannot achieve a fair distribution of justice.